mtobis (@mtobis): So I am thinking about @JKSteinberger ‘s big scary thread thos morning. I agree with it more in spirit than in detail. Things are quite grim right now, but it seems to me more like multiple converging crises rather than a big, simple, greenhouse-gas centred tale.
mtobis (@mtobis): In my thinking, we have multiple failures of democratic process and international comity. Both Reaganism and Putinism are driving it. And of course the pandemic hastened the decline to the point where it’s jaw-droppingly obvious.
mtobis (@mtobis): Climate is about to get real, and like covid will greatly weaken and demoralize us, but neither is really the fundamental issue.
The fundamental issue is that we’ve forgotten what “eternal vigilance” means. A civilzed by-the-people for-the-people world is WORK. It’s not easy.
mtobis (@mtobis): Nothing is more toxic to a sustainable modern world than “greed is good” cynicism, and we’ve lost track of how much our every moment has been pervaded by this ethic of selfishness.
There’s no way out of this trap without global solidarity and that requires a global conversation.
mtobis (@mtobis): When Trump won, I saw addressing the climate problem globally as set back a couple of decades. Decades we didn’t have. We are now facing a tome of severe disruption. We failed terribly.
Will we continue to fail terribly?
mtobis (@mtobis): Well, I’m not an optimist these days, but I’m not a doomer either, not in the sense that I advocate surrender
It’s time we develop a vision for the post-Putin, post-Reaganist, climate-disrupted world.
And we lack the tools to do that.
mtobis (@mtobis): And make no mistake, Putin (and whatever imperialist follows in his footsteps, sooner or later) will actovely try to subvert any such conversation by consistently and viciously promoting wedge issues, paranoia, xenophobia, fear, anger.
mtobis (@mtobis): If there’s a solution to be found, it’s a new kind of global conversation and a new kind of politics. It’s a very tall order. But that is what we need. /fin
mtobis (@mtobis): Sorry for typos. I really shouldn’t rant on the phone in the morning while my eyes are still fuzzy.